The Indian walked to an island near the farther shore, and using his axe with the light, easy freedom that a white man sometimes attains with a penknife, he cut two short sticks for fish-poles. He cut six yards of fish-line in two in the middle of the piece, and tied one end of each part to one end of each stick, making rude knots, as if any sort of a fastening would do. Equally clumsily he tied a bass hook to each fish-line, and on each hook he speared a little cube of pork fat which had gathered an envelope of granulated smoking-tobacco while at rest in his pocket. Next, he cut two holes in the ice, which was a foot thick, and over these we stood, sticks in hand, with the lines dangling through the holes. Hardly had I lowered my line (which had a bullet flattened around it for a sinker, by-the-way) when I felt it jerked to one side, and I pulled up a three-pound trout. It was a speckled trout. This surprised me, for I had no idea of catching anything but lake or gray trout in that water. I caught a gray trout next--a smaller one than the first--and in another minute I had landed another three-pound speckled beauty. My pork bait was still intact, and it may be of interest to fishermen to know that the original cubes of pork remained on those two hooks a week, and caught us many a mess of trout. There came a lull, which gave us time to philosophize on the contrast between this sort of fishing and the fashionable sport of using the most costly and delicate rods--like pieces of jewelry--and of calculating to a nicety what sort of flies to use in matching the changing weather of the varying tastes of trout in waters where even all these calculations and provisions would not yield a hatful of small fish in a day. Here I was, armed like an urchin beside a minnow brook, and catching bigger trout than I ever saw outside Fulton Market--trout of the choicest variety. But while I moralized my Indian grew impatient, and cut himself a new hole out over deep water. He caught a couple of two-and-a-half-pound brook trout and a four-pound gray trout, and I was as well rewarded. But he was still discontented, and moved to a strait opening into a little bay, where he cut two more holes. "Eas' wind," said he, "fish no bite."